Yesterday, Once More

Erasing a bad memory with a custom Turbo

Story and Photos by Ian Kuah

Reliving one’s misspent youth is a typical ironic British phrase, and it perfectly describes what some car enthusiasts experience as they motor along the long and winding road of sports-car ownership.

While the lucky ones end up with their dream machines, others might be inspired by long and lingering memories of cars that they or a relative owned many years before. For them, those rose-tinted memories sometimes lead them back to their youth later in life.

Quite often those who reach the end of that path discover to their chagrin that the journey itself was more enjoyable than finally arriving. The reality of owning an old car, one that can leave oil on the garage floor and does not always start on the button, can overwhelm someone with a stressful job and family in tow. On the other hand, as a temporary escape from the rat race, fixing up an old car can be therapeutic in itself.

This, however, is the story of a man who was lucky enough to start with his dream car back in 1989. Now, over two decades later, he has ended up with a similar machine, but on steroids. A very private person who kindly agreed to have the story of his car told on condition that we only use his first name, Bobby explained that he owned an original 1989 black-on-black 911 Speedster when they were new. The car was his most precious possession at the time and was even kept under a car cover in the garage.

However, this was the era when thieves noticed that coveted marques like Porsche and Ferrari were reaching sky-high resale prices, and Bobby’s car went missing one day, never to be seen again.

Marriage, family, and building up his business put the idea of replacing the Porsche on hold, and it was not until 2009, two decades later, that Bobby was ready to look for another Speedster.

In the interim, Bobby’s tastes had evolved, and with thoughts of more horsepower, uprated suspension and bigger brakes under a car with some of the styling cues from later Porsche models, buying an expensive collector-status ’89 Speedster to use as the base car was definitely off the table.